Print Indexes
- Christian Periodical Index byCall Number: 016.2 C46ISBN: 0069-3871Publication Date: 1956-2003Library has 1956-2003. Lists articles, organized by subject, from evangelical and fundamentalist periodicals (American).
America: History and Life
- America: History & Life with Full Text This link opens in a new windowThe main article database for researching American history. Use to journal articles, book reviews, and dissertations on all periods of North American history. Includes some links to full text. Complements Historical Abstracts. Indexes publications from 1964-present.
Many students already use JSTOR (see below), and while JSTOR is an excellent database, restricting your search to it means you are likely to miss lots of potentially relevant articles, not to mention dissertations: while America: History and Life covers 1,700 journals in American history, JSTOR only includes about 150, and does not include any dissertations.
Religion Database
- ATLA Religion Database with ATLA Serials This link opens in a new windowIdentifies journal articles and chapters from essay collections on all aspects of Religious Studies. Indexing for some journal titles extends back into the 19th century. Indexes publications from 1949-present.
As with America: History and Life (see above), ATLA Religion Database makes a better starting point for serious research than JSTOR, since it covers 1,746 journals, while JSTOR includes only about 60 religious studies journals.
Other Article Databases
There are many other specialized or multidisciplinary article databases that you could search, depending on the focus of your topic. These databases will give you access to popular magazines, scholarly journals, or both. Coverage can be recent or deeply retrospective (some databases cover as far back as the 17th century). Below is a list of databases you might find useful for this course.
- American Periodicals This link opens in a new window1740-1940. Over 1,000 titles. Probably the single most important digital collection of early American periodicals. Includes the sub-collection American Periodicals from the Center for Research Libraries, which is particularly strong in trade and labor periodicals.
- Harper's Weekly Historical Archive, 1857-1912The popular, American illustrated weekly magazine. One of the few major American periodicals not included in American Periodicals Online. Includes searchable subject indexes, with separate subject access to the illustrations. 1913-1916 available in HathiTrust.
- Nation Archive, The This link opens in a new window1865-present. Facsimile edition of the influential, American liberal news weekly.
- Liberty Magazine This link opens in a new windowLiberty: A Weekly for Everybody was founded in 1924 by Joseph Patterson, publisher of the New York Daily News and Robert McCormick, publisher of the Chicago Tribune. They set out to make the magazine more topical, daring and exciting than any competitors. Information was presented in a style heavily influenced by the emerging motion picture industry and focused on the most sensational and popular issues.
- Farm, Field and Fireside: Agricultural Newspaper Collection
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Historically significant U.S. farm weeklies, predominantly published in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but including some through the Twentieth Century. Together with the introduction of rural mail delivery, the telephone, and the automobile, farm newspapers played a key role in the modernization of rural America.
- Readers' Guide Retrospective This link opens in a new windowThe backfile for Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature, one of the oldest and most common article indexes. Identifies articles from general interest periodicals, including popular magazines such as "Life", "Look", "Colliers", "Ladies’ Home Journal", "Catholic World", "Good Housekeeping", "Saturday Evening Post", and "Country Life". Emphasis on American periodicals. Indexes publications from 1890-1982.
- Eight Centuries This link opens in a new windowCombines "Index to Legal Periodical Literature, 1786-1922"; "Poole’s Index to Periodical Literature, 1802-1907"; and several indexes for general and religious periodical literature of the late 19th century. Date coverage varies by file.
Full-Text Scholarly Journal Collections
- JSTOR This link opens in a new window
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The full text of over 2,500 scholarly journals, with coverage back to the first issue for each, in some cases as far back as the 17th century. Recent issues of most journals in this database are embargoed by journal publishers, so to be certain you are also identifying the most recent publications, use an article index like Historical Abstracts or America: History, and Life.
Several key historical and religious studies journals are included in JSTOR, such as
- Journal of American History
- Journal of Interdisciplinary History
- Journal of Religion
- History of Religions
- Journal of Black Studies
- Religion and American Culture
- Review of Religious Research
- Sociology of Religion
- Project Muse This link opens in a new windowOver 600 scholarly journals, with emphasis on recent ten years of issues. Originally intended as a complement to JSTOR.
Here you will find, for example,
- American Quarterly
- Journal of Social History
- Journal of Interdisciplinary History
- History and Memory
- Journal of the Early Republic
- Journal of Women's History
- Periodicals Archive Online This link opens in a new window
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1665-present. Over 700 European and American periodicals in the humanities and social sciences.
Print and Microform Collections
The Library also owns a large collection of periodicals of religious organizations. You can find these titles in the online catalog. Try simple keyword searches like: methodist AND periodicals. Alternatively, you can browse for subject headings:
- Baptists --United States --Periodicals.
- Congregational churches --Periodicals.
- Reformed Church in America --Periodicals.
- Reformed Presbyterian Church --Periodicals.
You can also identify religious periodicals by using classified lists like Periodicals Directory (began publication in 1932, subsequently known as Ulrich's), and Ayer's Directory of Publications (goes back to 1880).
Finally, you might consider browsing in the Main Stacks, beginning at call number 205.